2007 Two Pounds

Three different £2 coins were issued in 2007. Two commemorative coins, one to mark the 300th anniversary of the union between the kingdoms of England and Scotland and another to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. And the standard coin with the ages of man reverse.

There are known fakes of this coin, first seen in October 2016. The reverse of the fake coin is of very good quality. Fortunately the obverse is of lesser quality, the detail to the Queen is inaccurate and some of the dots around the rim are poorly defined/missing. The fake obverse seems to be shared with the fake 2006 Isambard Kingdom Brunel ‘achievements’ coin.

The story behind the design:

The obverse has the portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley. The reverse is by Yvonne Holton and depicts jigsaw pieces of the English rose and Scottish thistle. The Acts of Union (two separate acts, one of 1706 passed in the English parliament and the other in 1707 passed in the Scottish parliament) united England and Scotland to form Great Britain. Viewed initially as a hostile merger, generally the two kingdoms have worked together pretty well ever since. In 2014 Scotland voted on whether to leave the union and become and independent nation once again. The electorate voted with 55.4% to stay in the union with England, much to the apparent delight of the Queen.

Story on the Sun website: Note that probably the worst researched coin story I have ever seen was published on the Sun website 17/12/16 regarding this coin. It is responsible for starting the rumours about the edge lettering on coins being the wrong way up. It is currently the most common thing that I get asked and for 8 weeks I wondered why on earth, after over 30 years of coins with edge lettering being used every day by the millions that all of a sudden people were even bothering to read the edges! Part of the very badly written Sun piece tells readers:

“As normal, when the queen’s head is facing upwards the writing should run along the side so you can read it. But it seems some of the coins were printed with the writing upside down. It might not sound like a big deal, but these rare coins are exchanging hands for big bucks online.”

None of that information is true! When the Queen’s head is facing up, the edge writing can be either one way or the other. It is completely random. Statistically 50% are one way, 50% are the other way. So obviously the “these rare coins” part is untrue, there were about 4,222,500 made. As for “exchanging hands for big bucks online”, that is also completely untrue (at least, there is no evidence whatsoever to support that claim). People can ask whatever prices they want for something on an auction website, down the pub or wherever. Asking prices are not actual confirmed sales and in this case the £360 asking price (and others quoted) are simply people trying it on, hoping to find a mug to believe them – and the only people that seem to believe them are people that work for the Sun and certain other media outlets!

Incidentally, even when coins appear to have sold for far too much money online, it is invariably to someone known to the seller and isn’t actually a genuine confirmed sale.

Sort it out ‘The Sun’!

The story behind the design:

The obverse has the portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley, but for the first time the legend (the writing around the edge) was changed slightly to incorporate the denomination in words ‘TWO POUNDS’ as this wasn’t included on the reverse, as was the case for bi-metallic commemorative £2 coin types 8 – 17.

The reverse is by David Gentleman and shows the date ‘1807’ with it’s zero made up of a chain link. On the coins issued in the annual BU and proof sets the initials ‘DG’ appear next to the ‘1807’ (first reverse image shown above) and the silver coloured part is smooth. For the circulation coins the ‘DG’ initials are absent and the silver coloured centre part has an orange peel texture (second reverse image shown above). Very high grade coins of the circulation type (without the ‘DG’) are much higher on the Collectability/Scarcity scale, as they will mostly all be well used by now and simply aren’t often encountered in perfect or near perfect condition!

The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, which was certainly a step in the right direction:

The obverse portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley has been used on all UK coinage from 1998 to 2015 and is the fourth portrait of the Queen used on coinage. At the time of writing, this portrait is due to be replaced by a new one, to be unveiled in 2015.

The reverse design shows the ages of man. Represented are the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution, the Electronic Age and the Internet Age. The edge quote ‘STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS’ is from a letter by Sir Isaac Newton from 1676 in which he wrote: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, which may have been a modest nod to other scientists, but some say that it may have been poking fun at the stature of the recipient of the letter, Robert Hooke. The expression ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ pre-dates Newton by many centuries:

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